


Threading Things Together

by Masterweaver



Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-02 12:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18811381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masterweaver/pseuds/Masterweaver
Summary: The thing about time travel is that it can be very, very dangerous. So when a bunch of uninitiated factions start trying to use time manipulation for their own, contradictory purposes, an old friend reaches out to a long-retired adventurer to make sure the entire planet isn't obliterated. Thus begins a journey to the past!It's just a bit surprising that somebody else came along for the ride this time round.





	1. Honestly, you were warned!

She took a deep breath as she stepped out of the bookshop, the pure scent of snowfall over the moonlit town square bringing a smile to her face. Perhaps it was later than usual, but she'd been caught up reading a good book.

"An interesting sort of ware you have here."

She spun at the voice--one that she had not heard for some time, one that she had not expected to hear in this place.

"And an interesting name for the shop itself," observed the speaker. "Of course, it has to be interesting; the purpose is to attract and keep attention, is it not?"

The mask within the purple hood twitched, the glowing green spark in its eyes piercing her with an unfathomable gaze. "I have no badges to sell, today. Unless you have misplaced yours, which would be most... unfortunate."

Questions boiled within her brain, writhing and boiling as she tried to find what to say. Find some words, something to contribute to the conversation, something that wasn't just rude--

"We don't use pons here!" she blurted.

The stranger leaned on their cane. "I am aware of this."

"...How did you..." Her finger pointed skyward. "How did you even get here?! This is a completely different planet!"

"You are not the only one to traverse the stars. But that is unrelated to my presence. We have business to attend to."

"I'm not sure what you're talking about. You don't have badges to sell, I don't have pons to buy with--"

A strange, scratchy sound emanated from the red-garbed figure. "Most amusing. I do not speak of a monetary transaction."

She tilted her head. "I... don't understand what you mean."

The door to the bookshop opened, a dark-skinned woman stepping out. "And everything's locked up safe--oh! You're still out here? I thought you would have gone home by now!"

"Yeah, but this weirdo just stopped to talk with me."

"What weirdo?"

"This--" She turned, waving a hand at the place the stranger had been. "Huh. Okay, they're gone... yeah, it was one of the people I met when I was a kid."

The woman giggled, hiding her smile behind her hand.

"I'm serious."

"Oh, right, of course." She gave her an indulgent smile. "Which one was it? The mafia bakers? Or maybe the ghostly librarian?"

"They were mafia _cooks,_ he was more of a _lawyer_ ghost, and it was the badge seller who was just here."

"Right, the badge seller..." The woman rolled her eyes as they started walking down the road. "I thought that was a _minor_ character in your stories."

She shrugged, glancing back behind them. "I mean, I still don't know how the badge seller got around so quickly, and the badges were always just what I needed right at that time... You still don't believe me, do you."

"Your books are filed under 'fiction' for a reason, girl!"

"I am seriously tempted to break out a time piece just to see the look on your face."

The two of them locked eyes... and burst out into giggles. They continued to banter all through their walk, the snow gathering on one's bonnet and in the other's curly hair.

* * *

A nostalgic smile formed on her face as she stepped into the front room. "Home sweet home."

"One of these days you're going to tell me how you got such a fancy house."

"I've already told you, it's a--"

"--it's a spaceship, I know, I know." The woman chuckled as she stepped in after her. "You mind if I start something up in the kitchen?"

"Not at all! You're a much better cook than I am. Almost as good as Cooking Cat."

"Right, because making stew is such a hard skill." The woman hung her coat off the stand in the corner, walking around the ramp. "Seriously, how did you survive before you met me?"

"I used to be able to make a quick jaunt to Nomvoria and pick up a dozen pre-prepped meals without having to worry about running out of warp." She shrugged. "Then, well, you know what happened."

"One of these days I'll get an honest answer out of you."

"I've been _completely_ honest with you!"

The woman rolled her eyes as she stepped into the kitchen.

With a snort, she slipped into her old pilot's chair, spinning it around a couple of times. "Sometimes I wonder why I put up with this planet. Just open the vault, string up some time pieces, and wham-bam, I could be... eeeeeenh, nah, not a good idea."

"It is good to know you realize that."

She groaned, spinning around. "Hello _again_ , badge seller. Care to tell me how you got into my home?"

"I walked."

"Of course you did."

"As I said before, we have business to attend to. Time-related business, at that."

She crossed her arms with a huff. "I'm not giving you any of the time pieces."

"Oh, I would not be so foolhardy as to ask for such," the badge seller assured her. "We are both aware of how easily their power can be misused. In point of fact, such misuse is what brings me to you."

"...what?"

"For some unfathomable reason, the world on which we met has become temporally unstable. Rifts caused by broken time pieces would have simply collapsed, and the reversal of the alternate timeline was performed... admirably. Which suggests that some of the natives have found a way to manipulate time themselves." A green spark focused on her. "A problem for a unified society, and even more so for one divided as they are."

She frowned, glancing away. "You... want me to go back. To see if I can fix things..."

"As they are now, it is likely that one of those with time's grasp will render things irreparable. Your ship could not return in time, not using its warp."

"So, what, we just leave them all to unexist? Is that it?"

 The badge seller shook their head. "If there was no way to undo their doom, I would wait until it had happened before informing you. But their doom is reliant on what was. And what was can be altered."

Her eyes glanced toward the vault for a moment. Then she shook her head. "No, badge seller, no matter how much I want to save them, I'm still not giving you any of the time pieces. I can't risk you doing something bad to time."

A purple-gloved hand reached into a brown pack, producing a glimmering hourglass. "Then it is fortunate that I already have one of my own."

She inhaled sharply. "What?! How did you get that?!"

"I could ask the same of you."

"I made sure to gather all the ones I lost! I... think. I'm pretty sure I counted them... unless one of them doubled while I was counting--"

The badge seller raised their hand placatingly. "Allow me to put you at ease. I had this before you ever arrived around that world. I am quite skilled at the manipulation of time, and I know how to avoid... pitfalls."

Her head tilted to one side as she considered those words. "...Is that how you got everywhere so quickly?"

"From your perspective, perhaps."

"Right. So..." She pointed at the hovering hourglass warily. "What is it you want to do with that, exactly?"

"If we are to prevent the temporal dissolution of that world, we must seek out the origin of the temporal alterations. Be there when they happen... or before." The badge seller leaned on their staff. "This vessel arrived before time was triggered. It would be a simple matter to take it back along its timeline to that point."

"Okay... simple enough. What would happen to me, though?"

"You would come along as well. As the position of this vessel went back, so too would the bodies of those within."

She quirked an eyebrow. "You're completely sure about that?"

"I have done it before."

Her fingers rapped on the arm of her chair. "...I spent a few days in orbit before I landed here... I guess I wouldn't be altering this planet's timeline if I arrived later and spent fewer days to land on the same day. And I don't want those people to unexist... they don't deserve that."

"I would assume nobody deserves such a fate."

"Oh, I don't know, there are some real monsters out there." She smiled. "Alright, badge seller. Let's take off and see what we can do."

The badge seller twitched for a moment, then nodded. He took hold of the floating hourglass, watching the sands within swirl through the bulbs in increasingly esoteric spirals. Light speckled and rotated within the glass, reflecting in her eyes as she leaned forward. A sphere of dampened sound extended around them, through the floor, through the walls, dimming the light that attempted to travel through.

And then, with a dramatic tap of their staff, the badge seller inverted the hourglass.

Outside the window, trees pulled leaves up from the ground and sucked them in over and over and over. Flowers curled in and sunk into the ground. Birds flew backwards as the sun and moon spun from west to east, rain shooting up into the sky as cars drove backward down roads.

"You spent a lot of time here," the badge seller observed.

"Yeah, it was a bit annoying at first," she admitted, shrugging her shrinking shoulders. "But I made a life after I realized..." She trailed off, looking down at herself as clothes flickered on and off her body. "Huh, should have expected that."

The badge seller tilted their head. "You haven't traveled this far back before?"

"Honestly, I mostly use the time pieces to cheat at space travel and power machines. I think the most I've actually time traveled before is... a month? Maybe two? Well, outside of that whole thing with mustache girl and the alternate timeline, but that was just undoing what she did."

"What she did?"

"Right, you weren't there for that timeline--"

There was a sudden lurch as the ship took off. Or rather, unlanded, flying through the air backwards and out into space. The planet beneath it spun a few dozen times before suddenly jumping away.

"So... that's, mmm, four months before we're back. And at this rate, that'll be... two minutes for us?"

"Or therabouts," the badge seller agreed.

She looked down at her hands, once again small and childlike. They trailed along the coat and cape she had long ago stopped wearing. "Wow... this brings back memories... I have to admit, I'm kind of looking forward to going back. Or back to going forward. Or does time have different directions?"

"It does, but at the moment there isn't a need to distinguish them." The badge seller glanced out the window at a passing space station. "...why did you stop _here?"_

"Their tacos came with a free toy." She noticed the disbelieving green spark. "Hey, I was a kid! Toys are important!"

"Of course."

"So, that means that we should reach our destination riiiiiiight about... now!" She flicked her fingers at the window, grinning at the planet in her view. "Bam! I'm good."

"Quite." The badge seller released the hourglass, letting it spin wildly for a few seconds as the light sparkled to an ordinary glow. "I shall go on down and get a view of--"

There was a high-pitched shriek from the kitchen.

The badge seller paused, giving her a look. "What was that?"

"...Oh! Yeah, I have a housemate now." She frowned. "Will have, I mean. I guess she got dragged along--"

The doors slammed open, a brown child rushing out and clinging to the rails. She opened her mouth to say something, but then caught sight of the badge seller and blinked. And then she saw the planet outside the window, and her jaw dropped.

"...I shall be back in an hour." The badge seller walked for the door. "You should explain things to her."

"Yeah, I guess. Bye! Nice seeing you again!"

The brown child watched the badge seller walk out the door into the open vacuum of space with uncomprehending eyes. Then she turned to her, trying to make words come out her mouth.

"Yeah...." She shrugged. "Never lied to you. Welcome to the past! Also another world. Hey, did the time distortion affect the stew at all? Cause I think we should eat while I explain things."


	2. Let's just talk things out.

She watched her friend take another shaky sip of her hot cocoa.

"...Your stories are all true."

"Yep. Why didn't you believe me?"

"I thought you were... doing the thing some authors do. Refusing to break the illusion. Literary agent hypothesis, thing..."

"I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean what you're implying it means."

"That's--that's not the point!" Her friend gestured out the window. "That's not Earth! That's a completely different world! And we have artificial gravity, and I'm a kid again, and if your stories are true there's a lawyer ghost down there and--this is real. This is all real."

"...Yeeeeeeeees?"

The two of them stared at each other for a moment, each uncomprehending.

"...This is normal for you, isn't it? You don't have any idea why I'm freaking out."

"Not a clue," she replied honestly.

"...right." Her friend laughed wryly. "So... You've been calling yourself Heitama. Is that an alias, or what?"

She waggled a hand. "I mean... I gave the people who found me when I landed my real name, but my ◆︎🙵♏︎♎︎🙵🙵♐︎♐︎ translated it into their language."

"Your... what?"

"My ◆︎🙵♏︎♎︎🙵🙵♐︎♐︎." She paused. "Right, your language doesn't have a word for it. It's this thing."

Her friend blinked, staring at the thing in her hands. "Your _ponytail?_ Your ponytail translates things for you?"

"I... huh, I guess you _do_ have a word for it." She shrugged. "Yeah, it does. Low-level surface telepathy."

"...right. So... what is your real name?"

"It's ♓︎□︎◻︎◆︎❑︎♑︎."

"...yeah, there's no way I'm going to be able to pronounce that. I'm just going to keep calling you Heitama."

"And I'll just keep calling you Kiranja."

Her friend chuckled. "Well, that _is_ my name."

"I mean, sure," she allowed, "but... names come from languages, so my ◆︎🙵♏︎♎︎🙵🙵♐︎♐︎ sometimes over-reads."

"What do you mean?"

"You know how I called you 'Bow Kid?' Your name literally means Bow Kid. Or, well, dust/thread/sunbeam born, but that's a mouthful."

"Huh." Kiranja leaned back. "I thought you were calling me that because of the bow I wore." She glanced up. "Am wearing... right, I'm a kid again."

"Well, yeah, that too."

"...So, what does your name mean?"

"Hat Kid." She took in her friend's bemused expression. "It loses something in the translation."

"I'll just keep calling you Heitama."

"Which also means Hat Kid."

Kiranja rolled her eyes. "Of course it does. Hat Kid and Bow Kid. What a pair." She drained the last of her drink. "Well... this is kind of crazy, I'll admit that. Actually this is completely crazy. I've been turned into a kid again and I'm in a house in orbit around an alien planet that has magic and I'm in the past..." A frown formed on her face. "If... if I'm here now, then... what about my life on Earth? I mean, is there a kid me back there, or did she just disappear to become me, or... what?"

Heitama shrugged. "I dunno."

"You don't know?"

"Nope!"

"I thought you were the expert on time shenanigans."

"Time _space_ shenanigans. Completely different. Warping reality and all that." She hummed thoughtfully, leaning back. "I mean, sure I use time travel to facilitate space travel, but that's only because of how lightspeed works. Actually jumping around in time... I don't do that so much. This is the largest jump I've done. And it wasn't even me running the thing, it was the badge seller."

Kiranja nodded. "Right, the badge seller... That was a strange-looking guy. So... what do we do now?"

"Well, I'm here to keep this world from falling apart when temporal anomalies start up after somebody starts abusing time travel. You can... uh... hang out, I guess."

"What, I can't help at all?"

"I mean, you could, I just don't know how." Heitama shrugged. "It's not like I plan these things."

"You... you're trying to prevent the destruction of a planet by paradox, and you don't even have a plan?"

"Nope."

Kiranja boggled at her. "How can you not have a plan? Or at least an idea of what to do? I mean, this is... this is big time travel paradox stuff, if you make a wrong move things could just become... horrible!"

"Yeah, that's why I usually don't dabble in it at all. So I don't know what to do. But I figure it'll become obvious as I go along."

"You can't just say that! That's--that's irresponsible and dangerous even under the best of circumstances, and these are _not_ the best of circumstances!"

Heitama put a hand on her friend's shoulder. "Kiranja, I understand that your life on Earth was inundated with schedules and obligations, any single one of which could drag you into a never-ending spiral of debt and loans if you let it overwhelm you. Careful and meticulous planning is a necessity on your world, I get that. You know how much I struggled to adapt when I first arrived, and you, you were exactly the person I needed. But this isn't Earth. Organizations do not bind you with social chains. Events will occur not by thought, but by chance. To make a plan out here is to stifle yourself."

Kiranja stared at her for a full minute.

"...You... have no idea what you're doing at all, do you?"

"Nope!" Heitama chirped brightly.

"Oh my god." Kiranja buried her face in her hands. "My best friend and best bet to survive this is a blithely hat-obsessed girl."

"Hey! The hats give me cool powers!"

"Of course they do..."

Heitama watched her friend flop back onto the ground and stare at the ceiling. She rolled her eyes, stood up, and brushed her knees off. "See, you're still overthinking things. You're in orbit! Around another planet! One with a lot of talking animals, and cool stuff to see! Sure there's this whole time-travel junk going on, but you can't do anything about it right now so why not enjoy yourself until you can?"

"And what am I supposed to do, just wander the ship?"

"You could come down with me," Heitama suggested.

"...How?" Kiranja sat up. "I haven't seen a landing craft anywhere."

"Oh, we just jump down."

"...we just jump down," Kiranja repeated.

"Yep."

"We jump from orbit, into the atmosphere of a foreign planet, and land on the hard surface of the land beneath us."

"Sure. It's easy."

"And how do we get back up to the ship? Fly?"

Heitama scoffed. "No, that would be ridiculous."

"Of course it would."

"We use the teleporter."

Kiranja blinked. "...you have a teleporter?"

"Yep! It's how I get my mail."

"Why not use the teleporter to get down?"

Heitama gave Kiranja a strange look. "It's one-way."

"...Of course it is," the brown child muttered. "Why would I think otherwise?"

"Yeah, the idea of a two-way teleporter is pretty nuts."

 


End file.
